August birding, day two - an easy morning at Theler

Morning overlooking Oakland Bay on the south end of Shelton

I woke up at 6 on David's couch, and realized I needed to head back to the hotel to get a change of clothes and check out.  I snuck out and made my way up to Shelton, and decided to make a bee-line for Belfair.

Theler Wetlands, we meet again!

It will be interesting to see how many trips I make out here in the end, but I do get good birds when I visit.  This trip to Theler was no different.  The first good find was a Baird's Sandpiper.  I have mentioned that I heavily prefer hearing birds to seeing them.  My friend Pete used to rib me about that "It's called birdwatching, Tim."  So seeing an interesting sandpiper was of course at least a little stressful for me.

But here we go - what did I notice about this sandpiper:

1.  Wings extend past the tail.   This is one of the most important field marks for a Baird's, and could be seen in quite a few of the pictures I took.  I can also thank Pete indirectly for the picture.  When he passed, I purchased the scope from his daughter, because I figured Pete would keep bringing me good luck with birds.  Creative bit of digiscoping, and expanding things on my phone, but it came out pretty well.

2.  Medium length, dark, mostly straight bill.  You can see that it's a bit longer than what you might see on a Least Sandpiper, and a bit straighter than what you might see on a Western.   The legs were also dark, although the lighting on this picture obscures it.  I also was told something about the scalloping on the back... but I started to feel lightheaded as I looked that carefully.  Please enjoy the scalloping in spite of me.

3.  Buffy/peachy coloring on the face and breast.  The breast is a little obscured here, but it's still evident.  Something nobody mentioned to me was the pattern of color around the bill - but if you look at field guides, there's often the dark patch between the bill and the eye, framed above and below by lighter patches.  It was nice to have a bird so close that I could really study it.

OH!  And this is a code 5 bird in the county!  So it was a really fun find, and brought me to 168 for the year. 

169

After a whole year of looking in the right habitat, at least one near miss, and an extended search near a nest, I found a Northern Harrier patrolling the salt marsh.  A code 1 bird, which just means I should have found one ages ago.  The only birds left that are supposed to be that easy are American Coot and Northern Shoveler, although I have some serious doubts about those coots!

I brought home corn, honey, peaches and potatoes

I got a call from my daughter as I checked the water at Belfair.  "Hi Daddy!  I was just wondering what time you were coming home."   Meltmeltmelt.  So I packed things up at Belfair (where the interesting birds were Bonaparte's Gulls in winter plumage), and made my way home, taking  (Highway 3 (and stopping at an awesome fruit stand - peaches are in, just make sure to ask which ones are the goooooood ones), then a quick stop at Kennedy Creek (Okay, not that quick - I tried for a quick nap as the water was way out and I was way sleepy.  I also ran into Joelle and David once more here before I left!) where I found no new birds, but saw my first Northern Pintails of the fall, then to 1-5 to Renton and home.

169 is the total for the year - 11 off of the record.  Reports of Semipalmated Sandpiper, Short-billed Dowitcher, and a possible Sora at Theler already have me tempted to make another run!

Access Granted - 8/24

For me, one of the most tantalizing pieces of exploring is looking at places that seem inaccessible, but just might not be.  I was able to make my way to two such places in a day.  Neither was without effort, and one of them left me with some mosquito bites that are just now subsiding, but the effect on my soul was amazing.

Kayaking:  Olympia to Hartstene Island

I mean... I've been kayaking before.  Or was it canoeing?  At the south end of Lake Washington, where the Cedar River empties into the lake, there's a boat rental place where I've taken the kids out, usually pretty close to shore.  Kayaking in the open sound, however, was a new thing for me, and I really hadn't been in a kayak for at least a couple of years.

I needed to get to the south end of Hartstene Island, though!  Alcids are tough in Mason County, and I was still missing Rhinoceros Auklet and Common Murre.  In addition to those two, I had dreams of a lot of other fall migrants:  Red-necked Phalarope, Parasitic Jaeger, and Common Tern among them.  All of these are easier out on open waters, but Hartstene has few viewpoints, and other Islands (Hope and Squaxin) are not reachable by car.  So I had to find a way to get out there.

Boston Harbor Marina in Olympia took my calls and left me thinking that I could make the trip to Hope Island, so I made my way down Monday morning, and got myself a rental.  On this particular day, they were expecting higher winds in the afternoon, so my 9:30 departure meant that I had to cut Hope Island out of my plans.

I was of course a little worried about losing a camera or my phone in the water.  My phone did come along, but was kept in a little plastic bag where it ended up getting steamed by the drops of water in the bag, heated in the bright sun that day.  I was only able to get a few pictures, but the trip still brought some good birds.

The very first one was a new bird for the year.  I had made it not only across the channel from Thurston into Mason County, but almost to the shore of Hartstene, when I saw a Rhinoceros Auklet take flight, wheel around and land.  This was number 167 for the year, and a tough code 3 bird, but not surprising, as they had been seen at Nisqually and near Olympia during the same week.  I paddled in that general area for some time with no signs of any birds at all, then decided it was time to start paddling back around 11:00.

On the return paddle, I hadn't gone far when I realized a dozen or so alcids had landed in front of me.  Pigeon Guillemots!  I'd had them numerous times during the year, but this was a nice opportunity to see them 10-20 feet from the boat, as they were not all that shy.  The final alcid of the day, before I slipped back into Thurston County, was a Marbled Murrelet, a bird I have only had up near Hoodsport this year.

Dark blue line in the water to show the new places visited in the county on the kayak trip

Fancy meeting you here

After getting back to the docks, a little sweaty, and a little pink from the sunny day, I made my way back to the car.  My legs hurt!  Of all things, the paddling itself didn't make my shoulders tired, but something about the leverage, or the subtle but continuous work of balancing left my legs aching a little.  They also had a nice burn above the knees where I had not applied sunscreen.  A little discomfort, but a small price for a fun trip and a new bird.


From Boston Harbor, I made my way down to I-5, then to US 101, which took me into Mason.  My first stop was Kennedy Creek Estuary.  I had hopes of shorebirds and gulls here, possibly ducks, but the water was quite a ways out at 1 PM, so the shorebirds were out.  I did have two little bars with a few dozen gulls on them, and set to work sorting through them.  I found one that was clearly a Caspian Tern with a ridiculously orange/red bill and all of the other right field marks.  Another tern next to it seemed smaller... lighter bill... and I started to think it was a candidate for an Elegant Tern. 

The bird was a challenge for my current optical situation, and I figured I'd better get someone skilled up from Olympia or thereabouts to take a gander.  As I walked up the path back to my car, who should appear, but Terry Sisson!  Terry and I birded together back in May, and he was at the estuary with a similar list of birds on his mind - interesting terns, or gulls, or maybe even a pelican! 

A closer look, and we figured it was a juvenile Caspian Tern, especially when they took flight and showed that they were indeed very similar in size and all other markings.  We talked about the county and birds a bit more, and I made my way up to Shelton.

I was in the neighborhood

Gulls on Little Skookum Inlet

I drove up to Shelton and checked in at the Shelton Inn, sending an email off to David Ness before I arrived.  David lives down on Skookum Inlet, and had reported some interesting birds over the past year on ebird, including the first Northern Mockingbird and Ancient Murrelet for the county!  I had... creatively found (stalked) him on the internet, and found a way to contact him earlier in the month, and he had told me to let him know if I'd be in the area.

So I settled in for a nap in my room, when there was a knock at the door.  Apparently David and his girlfriend were just a block or two away having lunch when he got the email, so he had run down to see if I wanted to join them!  I had already eaten, so I showered up as they finished, then got directions to his place, stopping to grab my fee for the evening - a six pack of IPA.

A picture from the tracks. Streaky effects a welcome accident.

Little Skookum Inlet, which I shall probably call Skookum Inlet the rest of the way out, from laziness or habit, is a narrow inlet that has seemed nearly inaccessible from all of my drives along it.  Mentioning it to Terry earlier, he agreed that it was a body of water that he had simply not explored.  This illusion of inaccessibility was about to change for me!

David grew up on the inlet, and built his current house down the road with the help of his family.  He picked up birding growing up, and especially in college - it turns out that Evergreen in Olympia has a pretty amazing class that is punctuated with a trip down to Oregon for bird banding and observations.  As a result, his knowledge of birds on the inlet, and where to find them is pretty deep.

Whackin' them bushes

We started by simply watching from David's yard, the water pretty high but slowly going out.  A family of Common Mergansers was feeding quite well on fish in the inlet, and we hypothesized about what might happen to them over the course of a year.  After seeing not much going on in the inlet, I was given the option of hiking or kayaking.  I do hope to kayak in the inlet some time, but... I'd already done a little bit!  So we packed up and drove back down the road.

There are two places where it is possible to enter Skookum Inlet Natural Area Preserve off of Lynch Road.  We entered walking alongside railroad tracks and finding a spot to bushwhack through the second growth to get to the salt marsh along the inlet.  We talked about owls (he has had Barn and Great Horned) and raptors (Peregrine Falcon, Northern Harrier and Red-tailed Hawks), as we climbed along the trail, which was sometimes logs, sometimes obscured, but always basically navigable.  The website for the area notes that it is not ADA accessible.  Quite the understatement!

David and Joelle - my "tour guides" on the Skookum Intlet Natural Preserve.

Walking along the salt marsh, it felt like I had gone off the trail at Theler - right off the boardwalk into the tall grass that covered numerous tiny channels.  Somehow I navigated all of the little log bridges that David found with ease, and only found myself sinking slightly once or twice.  The water was out enough that some areas recently covered by water were still matted down, but there was not enough mud to be of much interest to shorebirds. 

A demonstration of "the tide is going out".  Joelle figured they'd get stuck.

As we waited, laying down on the flattened grasses and looking up at the clouds, we watched this change.  A Least Sandpiper, then a second, poked around in the first exposed mud. We continued to poke around, and found a pair of Spotted Sandpipers, and eventually a small mixed flock of peeps came in - a dozen or so Least and Western Sandpipers.  Duck-wise, some Green-winged Teal added some interest and variety, although no new birds were added for the year.

Asters in bloom - probably visited by David's honeybees

At some point, our stomachs told us it was time to make our way back, and we found our way to something a little more trail like, although I came out of the trip with scrapes from branches, mosquito bites galore on my legs, and nettle burns to go with my sunburn from the kayak trip.  Still worth it.  Easily worth it.  We were also lucky enough to get to watch a drop-dead gorgeous Black-throated Gray warbler in the trees as we exited.  Summer isn't over yet!

It seemed like a level picture at the time, but this was a picture of bliss.

The evening was a joy.  We broke into the six-pack of IPA, and into some goat cheese.. and heirloom tomatoes from the garden... and grapes from the garden... and pears from the garden.. and talked about birds, Mason County, Taylor Shellfish, building permits, Simpson Lumber.  It was interesting as always to be able to stop and talk with people who live in the county, rather than just blowing through, making a couple of stops for birds, and leaving. 

Conversation went pretty late, and I fell asleep on the couch well fed, and pretty damned content from another good day in Mason County.

Okay, I blew this, hence the little x, but the dark blue thin line that goes into the green area on 

the inlet - that's where I went.

The big picture - different colors for different trips.  I still have places to visit!!

Lower South Fork Skokomish River Trail (Not a birding trip - 8/2)

Fingers of God - High Steel Bridge

High Steel Bridge sunrise

So this really wasn't a birding trip, and phew!  The birds cooperated with that plan, all in all!  I head out once a year or so with my son Declan and my nephew Dirk to get some XY chromosome time out in the woods with them.  It's usually somewhere where I'm hoping to see some new county birds, but not a place where finding those birds will take much of a focused effort. Usually the mountains call!  Being up at high elevation almost always means fewer birds, but more interesting ones. 

We thought we saw a path down from the bridge, but..

Banana slug

For the hike this year, we went with the Lower South Fork Skokomish River Trail.  That's a mouthful, and I need to say it slowly whenever it happens aloud!  We left at 5:30 AM from Renton, and with a stop at McDonalds (breakfast) and Hunter Farms (gathering up some snacks for the hike), we made it to the trailhead and were hiking by nine.  Hunter Farms was a good stop again - the fellow I keep talking to about owls has still been seeing the Barn Owls, and when I described a Northern Harrier, he said "Oh yeah, we've got lots of those."  So... that's a code 1 bird that I probably won't miss this year!

The Skokomish Valley was beautiful, and we made a quick stop at the High Steel Bridge, having a little fun reading the interesting art spraypainted here and there on the bridge and pavement, and tossing pebbles down to the water below.  I scanned the roads here and on the way up to the trailhead to look for Ruffed Grouse, but it wasn't to be found today!

Different perspective on tree size - Lower South Fork Skokomish Trail

Old Growth Western Hemlock

It took a while to find the trail-head.  In the end, we just accessed the trail from the LeBar Horse Camp.  It was easy walking, all in all, especially compared to some of the grinding hikes I've been on!  It was interesting noticing nature with the boys on a kind of off and on pace.  The old growth Western Hemlocks were amazing - there were times when we were surrounded by the giants - and the ferns, lichen and mosses also had our attention.  But at other times, they broke into talking about school, video games, what's wrong with Taylor Swift, and hobbits.  They were not, I will say, the quietest two people to go birding with!  That didn't keep it from being a perfect trip.

One highlight on the way in was a spot where I saw a raptor/owl sized bird fly into a tree ahead.  Just for kicks and grins, I went with my suspicions and did my Barred Owl call.  One of them flew from the tree and landed on a branch in pretty plain view, hissing angrily at me - not a vocalization I'd heard before!  The boys were pretty enthralled, but we did move along after a couple minutes. 

Gorgeous ferns - go ahead and tell me what they were

Ferns had my attention, and I will just put the pictures in.  I have drawn and studied ferns, and almost figured out how to identify them, but I've had enough rounds of that to give up and just enjoy how there are a lot of different ones! 

Mushrooms will fall into the same category, although for today, the only ones we seemed to find were latched onto the sides of trees - large bracket fungi. 

On the way back, we decided that a dip in the river would be lovely.  Declan nearly went in deeper than he had planned!  As he stepped into the shallow water, he unintentionally stepped over a little lip, and began to sliiiiiide.  The river bank in parts was almost entirely clay, and it took him a second to realize he was on his way in.  After a little soaking of the shorts, he came back up and we all got barefoot for a bit - skipping rocks, watching minnows, and looking for fish in the blue water.

Panorama on the camera, and some careful cropping - I think there are a few kinds of ferns here as well.

Our swimming hole was up past the fallen log

I had a flying insect land on me, and I brushed it off, thinking it was a yellowjacket.  Dirk had it land on him and mentioned that it was weird looking as he smacked it and it landed on the shore.  Please read the following to review my deepest fears.  They can be found in bold, a little ways down into the following excerpt from my 39 counties blog. 

http://www.39counties.blogspot.com/2011/07/big-ol-trip-day-seven.html

So... thank goodness I didn't interrupt our testosterone filled day with any screaming.  I collected the little guy and brought it home in a water bottle.  The best bets were that it was something in the genus tabanus, like a horsefly or deerfly.  Something more specific would be dandy, but I have a picture of the beast here for general interest and enjoyment.

The Beast - probably from genus tanabus

Bracket fungi

We left the water and hiked it back to the car, the only big nature-y thing that grabbed our attention after that was a spider.  I couldn't get a picture of the darn thing, but the easiest thing to see was that it had alternating white and black leg segments, with cryptic black and white markings on its body.  It did something I haven't seen from spiders before, striking a defensive posture when we tried to get closer to get a picture.  As with the fly, I'd be happy to have someone contact me to talk about it and identify it. 

I think identification will always be an important thing for me.  But why haven't I been sucked in to anything besides birds?  Why haven't I been throwing myself headlong at mushroom, dragonfly or fish identification?  I think if any of the above learned how to sing, it might be a different story.



A Common Nighthawk gave a daytime flyover before we got to the car, and we arrived at JR's Hideaway in Belfair famished - left satisfied and tired.

I have no idea - what're these orange things?

I just made sure not to eat these.

7/29 Shorebirding at Theler

I put it to a family vote.  I had been to Mason for two good days of birding or so for the month, but shorebirds were coming through (including some rare ones for the county like Semipalmated Sandpiper), and I felt like a morning of searching for birds would help.  I casually asked Declan what he thought of me heading over with rare birds coming through, and he said, "Well, you've seen a lot of birds this year already... it's going to get harder and harder to find new ones, so I think you should go."  I peeked behind me suspiciously, half-expecting to find a teleprompter run by one of those birders that chases a little more frequently.  With everyone's blessing, I picked a day and promised to be back by three.


Theler Wetlands

I hadn't been here in some time!  On other recent trips, I had been at higher elevation, or scouring unexplored roads in the western half of the county.  Here is where recent weeks had brought some birds that I needed for the year:  Long and Short-billed Dowitchers, Lesser Yellowlegs, Semipalmated Sandpipers, as well as a Western Meadowlark! 

I made my 7-11 stop, and my favorite Indian gentleman was training a new employee as I got my coffee... and donuts... I tried to pass, but I figured I'd walk it all off at Theler, yeah?

I arrived around 7.  Honestly... this may have been on the late end of preferable.  It would be extremely interesting to do a full Big Sit at Theler, just to watch the tides, although I put in quite a few hours on this day.  Still, birds were singing/calling as I passed through.  Many birds were already shifting into more passive calls instead of their full songs as we were well into The Doldrums of summer when the heat melts away any interest in singing for the birds.

blackberries were starting to ripen - fall is coming!

I really don't like shorebirds.  I mean... they aren't as bad as gulls, but they definitely require what I would call "work" in terms of diligently looking over field marks.  I had already found Western and Least Sandpipers, and they are pretty common, so my main concern with the little peeps was to keep an eye out for any bird with dull markings on its back (Western and Least usually have some rufous coloring on their back), black legs (Least have yellow, unless they've been tromping about in the mud), and a stubby bill (Western has a longer one that tapers and often droops, although that is pretty variable).  Finally, I wanted to look for something that was semipalmated if I could.  I used to joke about this word.  "Man... I'm feeling... like.. not really palmated, but definitely semi today." before someone explained to me that this has to do with the webbing on the feet.  Semipalmated Sandpipers have got a little bit.  It wasn't likely something I'd be able to look for, but I had it on my list anyway.


Rounding a tree lined turn and approaching the first few shorebirds, it wasn't the little dudes at all.  As I appaeared, two Long-billed Dowitchers (165) and a single Lesser Yellowlegs (166) called out for me and took flight.  When they finally did return, it was nice to be able to go through the field marks for them.  I had a chance to see the extensive orange belly on the dowitcher, and bars (short-billed has spots rather than stripes on the flanks.  There is also a difference in the tertials... but you know me and tertials), the yellowlegs had a bill that appeared short (on greater, the bill is a good bit longer than the head), and a straight, if not slightly downwardly turned bill (slightly upturned on a greater).

Peeps!  Nothing unusual today

Spoiler alert... these were my only new year birds of the day, but the amount of stress that was removed by having good looks at these shorebirds was significant.  Not like back when I got a good look at a Hermit Warbler, but up there! 


For the next I don't know how long, I watched Least and Western Sandpipers under and around the next bridge.  They were happy with me right there on the bridge, so I used the time to give as many birds a careful look as I could.  With all of the field marks above, it was nice to also add the calls - I listened to birds as they took flight and inspected them as they landed, with most of them giving a nice call for a Least Sandpiper, while some gave the more strained, higher pitched calls for a Western.  My ears strained to find a Semipalmated call in the mix - my phone giving me the range of tunes to listen for - but nothing gave any clues as to which bird should get my attention. 

Swallows speckled in the sky - I should've checked!

I did find three other shorebirds - Killdeer galore, of course, a lone Semipalmated Plover, and Spotted Sandpipers - three of them found at a fishing pull-off as I travelled up to Belfair State Park.  Belfair S.P. was not a large part of my day, but I figured it would be silly to not at least look.  When I arrived, we were about 20 minutes ahead of low tide, and the birds were mostly 500 miles out, with the exception of a few Killdeer and a handful of Least Sandpipers in close.


Finishing up at Theler, I added in the whole loop and took another look at the sandpipers, as well as some of the juveniles running around - robins, yellowthroats and blackbirds were the strangest looking characters.  I did not give the 3 billion swallows a good careful look, and wish that I had in retrospect!  A Bank Swallow was found that day by Cara Borre later in the day! 

Thistle - already thinking about next year

Cara has been giving Mason County a lot of extra love ever since our trip together, slowly adding the easier birds in step with me, finding some that I still haven't, and adding a slough of code 4 and 5 birds!  With all of those, she is just 2-3 birds behind me for the year.  We've been keeping in touch on rare birds coming through, and it will be interesting to see what we turn up with the added energy of competition as we enter the last few months so close to the county year list record of 179!


The tide was ooooooout, and the birds weren't moving when I packed it up and made it back an hour early for my date - making sugar cookies with my daughter.